It must be confessed, however, that the case looks exceedingly grave against the young man, and it is very possible that he is indeed the culprit.

Arthur Conan Doyle -- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

He stood over an empty box, his head swiveling around the room, looking for the culprit.

Stephenie Meyer -- The Host

I will hunt out the culprit and bring him to you.

Frank Beddor -- The Looking Glass Wars

It could have betokened nothing short of the anticipated execution of some noted culprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had but confirmed the verdict of public sentiment.

Nathaniel Hawthorne -- The Scarlet Letter

A plunger revealed the culprit—a sanitary napkin, become quite unsanitary by that time.

Ellen Hopkins -- Burned

One of the culprits will be mazzolato; [*] he is an atrocious villain, who murdered the priest who brought him up, and deserves not the smallest pity.

Alexandre Dumas -- The Count of Monte Cristo

Every victim was a culprit, every culprit a victim, and somebody had to stand up sometime to try to break the lousy chain of inherited habit that was imperiling them all.

Joseph Heller -- Catch-22

There was no voice of rebuke; but there were averted eyes; there was a silence and an air of solemnity that struck a chill to the culprit’s heart.

Mark Twain -- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Mr. Earnshaw snatched up the culprit directly and conveyed him to his chamber; where, doubtless, he administered a rough remedy to cool the fit of passion, for he appeared red and breathless.

Emily Bronte -- Wuthering Heights

Their arrival was dreaded by the elder Miss Bennets, and Jane more especially, who gave Lydia the feelings which would have attended herself, had she been the culprit, and was wretched in the thought of what her sister must endure.

Jane Austen -- Pride and Prejudice

That hiss, faint as it was, irritated the irascible gentleman, and sealed the culprit’s fate.

Louisa May Alcott -- Little Women

He had a hunch that the culprit (or culprits) intended something more serious than juvenile pranks.

Carl Hiassen -- Hoot

Without the prompting the culprit was used to, his confession was nonsense.

John Steinbeck -- East of Eden

The man would probably be condemned; the attorney-general was very clever, and never missed his culprits; he was a brilliant fellow who wrote verses.

Victor Hugo -- Les Miserables

Once the town was terrorized by a series of morbid nocturnal events: people’s chickens and household pets were found mutilated; although the culprit was Crazy Addie, who eventually drowned himself in Barker’s Eddy, people still looked at the Radley Place, unwilling to discard their initial suspicions.

Harper Lee -- To Kill a Mockingbird

As Buck sprang to punish him, the lash of Francois’s whip sang through the air, reaching the culprit first; and nothing remained to Buck but to recover the bone.

Jack London -- The Call of the Wild

But he resolutely held the door of his tepee, inside which he had placed the culprit, and refused to permit the vengeance for which his tribespeople clamoured.

Jack London -- White Fang

Also, they stood about the door of the Jolly Bargemen, with knowing and reserved looks that filled the whole neighborhood with admiration; and they had a mysterious manner of taking their drink, that was almost as good as taking the culprit.

Charles Dickens -- Great Expectations

On March 24th the Camera named the probable culprit as ’tainted formula’.

Stephen King -- Misery

He charged his oldest wolf-son, Taha Wi, with finding the true culprit before hostilities began.

Stephenie Meyer -- Eclipse

An unhappy culprit, found guilty of imperfect exercise, approaches at his command.

Charles Dickens -- David Copperfield

Blame the wind and the rain and the sun and the earth: they cannot refute it, they are the culprits.

Kamala Markandaya -- Nectar in a Sieve

As the chief slowly uttered these words, pausing impressively between each sentence, the culprit raised his face, in deference to the other’s rank and years.

James Fenimore Cooper -- The Last of the Mohicans

Hagrid gave a howl of fury, lifted the culprit bodily from the ground and threw him; the man flew what looked like ten feet and did not get up again.

J.K. Rowling -- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

All stood on two feet and turned their blind heads toward the culprit.

T. H. White -- The Once and Future King

But depredations on the neighbors were allowable, provided the culprit managed to evade detection or suspicion.

Harriet Jacobs -- Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Poor hygiene and lack of clean drinking water were the culprits, he said.

Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin -- Three Cups of Tea

The elder culprit had ceased from sobbing, and was hanging upon Tom’s words with an excited interest and a growing hope.

Mark Twain -- The Prince and The Pauper

Captain Anderson, his officers, and the engineers put their heads together, then posted a warning that if the culprit were detected, he would be thrown overboard without a trial.